Crossing America

After our stay in Washington we would be flying across America to San Francisco on the west coast. I’m not sure why we weren’t on a direct flight, but we weren’t. We would be flying to Detroit, then on to SFO on Delta, which Pete thought was the better of the US airlines. In fact, before we left Australia, Delta informed us we’d been upgraded from business class to first class. How nice. We arrived at Washington’s airport in plenty of time for our flight and discovered a few… unexpected things about air travel in the USA.

Although airports everywhere are trying to shorten queues and reduce the number of staff at airports in various ways, up to this point (in 2011) everywhere we’d been we went up to a counter, checked in our luggage with the clerk, where we watched it disappear via a conveyor belt, and received our boarding passes. Not in Washington. For a start we had to wait a looong time to get served, despite being business class/ first class. And then when we checked in we were given a boarding pass and told to take our suitcases up to baggage handling ourselves. Then we had to go through security. When I noticed other people taking off their shoes I asked a staff member if that was required. She looked at me as if I was a bit stupid or just being difficult. There were no signs telling passengers what was needed, or if there were I didn’t see them and I STILL haven’t been through any other country’s security where shoes had to be removed – unless they set off the alarm. It was also the first time I’d been through the full-body X-ray booth.

Business class boarded first and we sat watching the other passengers file down the aisle. Many of them had suitcases which were almost as large as the bags we’d checked in and the cabin crew stuffed the luggage anywhere it could fit in the overhead lockers. Obviously, everybody was avoiding checking in luggage. We landed in Detroit and found our flight to SFO had been delayed several hours. Despite our business class/first class tickets we were not permitted into the airline’s lounge so we kicked our heels clock-watching with everyone else.

At last, we boarded and we were off. Flying across America takes as long as flying across Australia but the view is very different. In Australia most of the flight is over desert, the red heart of the country. In America we crossed farmland, enormous rivers, large cities, and mountain ranges. And maybe a bit of desert. The view out the window was great.

I can’t say the same for business class service. It’s a five-hour flight so we were offered a meal. We were in the last row of the business class section (I never did see any sign of first class) so the choice was a do-it-yourself hamburger, or nothing. The salad had already been snapped up by everybody else. We were delivered a tepid meat patty, a cold bun, a slice of plastic cheese, a lettuce leaf, slices of tomato, and some dressing for the burger, with potato salad (I think) and a slice of cake. I didn’t finish the burger and only tasted the potato salad which was inedible IMO. I probably ate the cake. It was the worst meal we had on any flight anywhere, by a long way.

By the time we got to San Francisco it was quite late. We’d booked two nights in a Marriot hotel situated between the airport and the city that offered a regular shuttle bus into San Francisco. The place had a nice restaurant with an inviting menu but it was too late to eat a meal, so we sat at the bar and had a couple of drinks with some nuts before we wandered off to bed.

We’d have tomorrow and a good part of the next day to look around before we headed home.